"Are you afraid at other times?" he questioned remorsefully.
"I am always afraid when other people are jolly and in the highest spirits. Formerly with my friends I often used to feel as if I could not keep pace with them, and that they would notice it and despise me. But they did not notice anything. When I was a child I had a doll with big, blue glass eyes, and when my mother died I had to sit in the next room with my doll. It kept staring at me with its hard, wide-open eyes that seemed to say to me: 'Your mother is dead. Now every one will look at you as I do.' I would like to have laid it on its back so that the eyes would close. But I didn't dare to do so. Could I have laid the people too on their backs? They all have such eyes and sometimes—" She hid her face on his breast, "Even you have."
He felt a lump in his throat. His hand sought her neck and his voice trembled. "Agnes! my sweetest, you cannot know how much I love you. … I was afraid of you, indeed I was! For three whole years I longed for you, but you were too beautiful for me, too fine, too good. …" His heart melted and he told her everything that he had written to her after her first visit, in the letter which still lay in his desk. She had raised herself and was listening to him enchanted, with her lips parted. Softly she rejoiced: "I knew it, you are like that, you are like me!"
"We belong to one another," said Diederich, pressing her to him, but he was frightened by his own words. "Now," he thought, "she will expect me to speak!" He wanted to do so, but felt powerless. The pressure of his arms around her back grew weaker. … She made a movement and he knew that she no longer expected him to speak. They drew away from one another with averted faces. Suddenly Diederich buried his face in his hands and sobbed. She did not ask why, but soothingly stroked his hair. That lasted quite a while.
Speaking over his head into space, Agnes said: "Did I ever say that I thought it would last? It must end badly because it has been so beautiful." He broke out in desperation. "But it is not over!"
"Do you believe in luck?" she asked.
"Never again, if I lose you!"
She murmured: "You will go away out into the world and forget me."
"I would rather die!"—and he drew her closer. She whispered against his cheek:
"Look how wide the water is here, like a lake. Our boat has got loose of itself and has led us far out. Do you still remember that picture? and that lake on which we once sailed in a dream? Whither, I wonder?" And more softly: "Whither are we drifting?"
He did not answer any more. Wrapped in one another's arms, and lips pressed against lips, they sank backwards deeper and deeper over the water. Was he dragging her? Was she pushing him? Never had they been so united. Now, Diederich felt, it was right. He had not been noble enough, not trustful enough, not brave enough, to live with Agnes. Now he had risen to her, now all was well.
Suddenly came a bump and they started up. Diederich's movement was so violent that Agnes had fallen from his arms to the bottom of the boat. He drew his hand across his forehead. "What on earth was that?" Shivering with fright he looked away from her, as if he had been insulted. "One should not be so careless in a boat." He allowed her to get up by herself, seized the oars at once and rowed back. Agnes kept her face turned towards the shore. Once she ventured a glance at him, but he looked at her with such harsh, mistrustful eyes that she shuddered.
In the darkening twilight they walked faster and faster back along the high road. Towards the end they were almost running. It was not until it was so dark as to hide their faces that they spoke. Perhaps Herr Göppel was coming home early the next morning. Agnes had to get back. … As they arrived at the inn, the whistle of the train could be heard in the distance. "We can't even eat together again," cried Diederich, with forced regret. In a terrible fluster their things were got, the bill was paid and they were off. They had scarcely taken their seats when the train started. It was fortunate that it took them some time to get their breath and to talk over the hasty questions of the last quarter of an hour. They had nothing more to say, and there they sat alone under the dim light as if stunned by a great mishap. Was it that sombre country out there which had once enticed them and promised happiness? That must have been yesterday? It was now irrevocably past. Would the lights of the city never come to release them?
By the time they had arrived they had agreed that it was not worth while getting into the same cab. Diederich took the tram. With the merest glance and touch of the hands they separated.
"Phew!" exclaimed Diederich, when he was alone. "That has settled it." He said to himself: "It might just as well have gone wrong." Then, indignantly: "Such an hysterical person!" She herself would probably have clung to the boat. He would have taken a bath alone. She only hit on the trick because she wanted to be married at all costs! "Women are so impetuous and they are without restraints. We men cannot keep up with them. This time, by God, she led me an even worse dance than formerly with Mahlmann. Well, let it be a lesson to me for life. Never again!" With assured gait he betook himself to the Neo-Teutons. Henceforth he spent every evening there, and in the day time he ground for his oral examination, not at home, as a precaution, but in the laboratory. When he did come home he found it laborious to mount the stairs, and he had to admit that his heart was beating abnormally. Tremblingly he opened the door of his room—nothing. In the beginning, after it had become a little easier, he ended regularly by asking the landlady if any one had called. Nobody had called.
A fortnight later a letter came. He opened it without thinking, then he felt inclined to throw' it into the drawer of his writing table without reading it. He did so, but then took it out again and held it in front of his face at arm's length. His hasty and suspicious glance caught a line here and there. "I am so unhappy. …" "We've heard all that before," Diederich thought in reply. "I am afraid to come to you. …" "So much the better for you!" "It is dreadful to think we have become strangers to one another. …" "Well, you've grasped that much anyhow." "Forgive me for what has happened, if anything has happened. …" "Quite enough!" "I cannot go on living. …" "Are you beginning that all over again?" Finally he hurled the sheet of paper into the drawer with that other letter which he had filled with exaggerations during a night of madness, but which he had fortunately not posted.
A week later, as he was coming home late, he heard steps behind him which sounded peculiar. He turned round with a start and the figure stood still with raised hands stretched out empty before it. While he opened the street door and stepped in he could still see it standing in the shadow. He was afraid to turn on the light in the room. While she stood out there in the dark, looking up, he was ashamed to light up the room which had belonged to her. It was raining. How many hours had she been waiting? She was probably still there, waiting with her last hope. This was more than he could stand. He was tempted to open the window, but he refrained. Then he suddenly found himself on the stairs with the key of the street door in his hand. He had just enough will power to turn back. He shut his door and undressed. "Pull yourself together, old chap!" This time it would not be so easy to extricate oneself from the affair. No doubt the girl was to be pitied, but after all it was her doing. "Above all things, I must remember my duty to myself." The next morning, having slept badly, he even held it as a grievance against her that she had once more tried to make him deviate from his proper course. Now, of all times', when his examination was imminent! It was very like her to behave in this unconscionable fashion. That scene in the night, when she had seemed like a beggar in the rain, had transformed her into a suspicious and uncanny apparition. He regarded her as definitely fallen. "Never again, not on your life!" he assured himself, and he 'decided to change his lodgings for the short time which he still had to stay, "even at a pecuniary sacrifice." Fortunately, one of his colleagues was just looking for a room. Diederich lost nothing and moved at once far out onto the North Side. Shortly